What is Steampunk Alchemy?
Steampunk Alchemy is born out of my love for things like Alchemy and Magic as well as my interests in Steampunk. Originally it was going to be a webcomic, but my complete lack of drawing skills has put that idea on hold. Then, in a fit of boredom and having just started blogging I decided I could use this medium to publish my own original fiction, using my characters. An interest in mystery series like the Dresden Files and Sherlock Holmes pushed me to make this into a mystery series, though hopefully still be rather humorous.
The Characters
Sven Larson: A Norwegian born alchemist in his mid-twenties who immigrated to London England in order to be near the center of the technological revolution of Queen Victoria's Empire.
Lady Emma Radcliff: An English Noblewoman who Sven is working for. She may play a larger role in his English life as things go on.
Amanda Howett: An English woman and practitioner of the Tarot who is Sven's ex from a few years ago.
Megan Connor: Sven's housekeeper and Landlady. She's Irish, in her early twenties, and inherited the house from her mother.
The World
The setting is about the 1860's, though this is subject to change as I get more into developing this story. the reason I'm going for then at the moment is because the Difference Engine by Charles Babbage was first developed in 1822. I'm going with he completed it by about 1830, though this is slightly flexible at the moment. Given that the Difference Engine is said to have been able to equal the computers of the 1960s, The world I'm writing it will have some technology along the level of the late 1980s-90s, though on a drastically reduced scale since everything is hand crafted as is correct for the Victorian Era. What this means is that you'll have aeroships, namely blimps and bi-planes, and something along the lines of the internet just starting up, working along the lines of the telegraph being connected to the difference engine and used to send mass communication, along the lines of e-mail and maybe chat-rooms.
The first thing to keep in mind though is that, as with all steampunk, this world runs on steam and clockwork. It's expensive to make, not all that cheap to run, and only the upper-class and some parts of the middle class who have access to most of the technology, especially difference engines, which are used mainly by governments and academia.
I'll expand on this more later, primarily in the story itself.
